Chocolate
by RodentFace
Summary: The Marauders are throwing Remus a surprise party and have somehow dragged Lily into it.  This is the conversation that Lily and Sirius have while James is making all the food for the party.  Sirius and Lily FRIENDSHIP! Pairing: Lily/James


Disclaimer: This isn't really disclaimery, but this story made me really hungry. Anyway, I don't own Harry Potter, blah, blah, blah.

Lily Evans stared across the table, wishing she had something interesting to say. Sirius Black didn't seem at all bothered by the awkward silence. On the contrary, he appeared to be in a very good mood. "Um, shouldn't we be doing something?" she asked.

"Like what?" Sirius looked up at her.

"I don't know! You and James came up with the brilliant idea to drag me into this! And according to Peter, this whole thing was your idea! So shouldn't you be giving me a job right now!" she rolled her eyes.

"Well, what would you _like_ to do?" he asked innocently.

"I don't know! I don't even what I'm doing here. James just told me to show up here-where are we anyway?" she asked.

"To answer your question of what you're doing here, you're helping us get ready for the party!" he said excitedly.

"Party?" she asked, blankly. "What party?"

"Remus's of course! Who else has a summer birthday?" he looked at her expectedly. When she didn't answer, he said, "Exactly! That's what I thought."

"Why am I helping getting ready if I didn't get an invitation?"

"It's a surprise party!" Sirius whispered excitedly, leaning across the table so that she could hear him.

"Okay…so where are we?" she looked around the apartment. She'd never been here before; James had just given her the address.

"You know how Moony said that he'd gotten a new apartment…?" Sirius grinned slyly.

"You didn't?" Lily grinned. "You _broke _into his apartment to throw him a party?"

"It's technically not breaking in if you know where the spare key is hidden," he mumbled.

Lily laughed. "Where _is_ he anyway? Couldn't he just walk in at any time?"

"We had Peter take care of that," Sirius looked at his fingernails. Apparently satisfied with their cleanliness, he looked up at Lily and said, "Mooney seems to think that we forgot his birthday and, being him, he hasn't said anything to us. I'm assuming that he's telling himself the obvious, 'They're probably thinking about Order stuff,' 'It's not a big birthday anyway…...' 'I really don't need to worry about it with the war going on…..'" Sirius rolled his eyes. "With the war going on, we should most definitely being celebrating these things! Especially his _eighteenth _birthday!" he nodded in agreement with himself.

"What's so important about his eighteenth birthday?" Lily raised an eyebrow. "Wizards come of age at seventeen."

"Yes, but this is his first birthday out of Hogwarts," Sirius explained.

"Ah," Lily nodded. "So…where does Peter come in?"

"He's 'the only one' who remembered Mooney's birthday. Pete's stalling until everything's ready. They're probably going to the Leaky Cauldron or something. Nothing too exciting though."

"Wait," Lily said almost worried, "you're having _Peter _stall Remus? He's the worst with secrets! You _know _he'll let something slip."

"Yes, but we didn't really have any better choices did we?" Sirius said sadly.

"Why can't James stall him?" Lily asked.

"James is the only one of us who can cook," Sirius pointed out.

Lily sat ups a little straighter. "James can cook?"

"Yeah, he's the best of the four of us….You've been going out with him for a few months now and you didn't know that?"

"We always go out….usually to pretty fancy restaurants," Lily shrugged.

Sirius grinned and said fondly, "Just like Prongs. Always wanting to show off how much money he has."

"So, James can _cook_?"

"Yes, Lily, we've been over this. Why does that matter so much?"

"Girls like guys who can cook," she said. "Why didn't he ever tell me?"

Sirius snickered. "Someone's in the doghouse."

"Actually," Lily grinned, "he's in the kitchen."

"Actually he is," Sirius jerked his head toward the next room. "He arrived about fifteen minutes before you did."

"Oh. Why can't _you_ stall Remus?"

"I'm the mastermind behind this whole operation. I need to be here. Plus, I'm decorating his apartment for the party," he gestured to the currently-bare walls.

"So why aren't you doing any decorating?"

"I'm waiting for James to finish in there," he jerked his head toward the kitchen.

"You're not decorating the kitchen are you?" she laughed and he simply grinned wickedly. She immediately stopped laughing. "You're not _actually _going to decorate the kitchen are you?"

"You'll see."

Lily blinked. Finally she said, "Why can't I stall Remus then? I'm less likely to spill something than Peter."

"Yes, but there are several reasons for that. First, if you remembered his birthday, surely you'd tell Prongs. Second, if you were to spend the day with Remus for his birthday, you'd most likely take James, but you can't do that because we need him to make all the food. Third, James said I need a supervisor."

"A supervisor?" Lily asked. "For what?"

"Decorating," he answered simply. "He says that I need someone to make sure that I 'don't go overboard,'" he laughed as though it were an unlikely concern. "And finally, Remus would find it awkward."

"Why would he find it awkward?" Lily asked.

"You've started dating James…" his voice trailed off and he gave Lily one of those _you-know-what-I-mean _looks.

"I've been friends with him longer than I've even been able to talk to the rest of you with screaming," Lily pointed out. "What's my dating James have to do with it?"

"I don't know!" Sirius waved an impatient hand. "It's Remus! He's weird about everything!"

They fell into another uncomfortable silence in which Sirius analyzed the ceiling and tried to estimate how many streamers he could hang from it before Prongs and Mrs. Prongs-to-be would put their feet down.

Lily began to feel hungry and looked at her watch; it was six o'clock. She'd arrived at five and hadn't eaten before then. "What kind of food is there going to be at the party?"

"Chocolate," he answered simply.

"Chocolate what?" she asked and he simply looked confused. "Chocolate cake? Ice cream? Biscuits?"

Sirius nodded. "Yes."

"Yes to what?"

"Yes to all of it. If it's made of chocolate, we're serving it!" he gave her a wicked grin which terrified her.

"So ice cream, cake, biscuits. Are we going to have treacle tart?" she asked hopefully. Treacle tart was her favorite.

"Um, I'm sure that you could ask James to make you some. HEY, PRONGS!" he shouted towards the kitchen.

James' head poked out of the door. He had flour on his cheek. "What?"

"Lily wants some treacle tart. Think you could make some?" Sirius grinned.

"Sirius, it's fine," Lily started to say but neither of them seemed to hear her.

"Treacle tart, right," James nodded. He looked rather harassed; doing all the cooking for a party can do that to you. James went back into the kitchen just as Sirius had another brilliant idea.

"Hey! And dip Remus's into chocolate! It'll fit into the theme of the party better that way!"

Lily sat there feeling guilty for giving James even more work to do, but she was very hungry, so she didn't say anything.

"James makes the _best _treacle tart ever!" Sirius told her.

"Really?" Lily asked.

"Yeah, in our fourth year, he found out it was your favorite so he spent the better part of the first term finding recipes and trying to find the best one. Lucky for us Marauders, we got be the judges."

Lily raised her eyebrows but said nothing. _Fourth year?_ Finally, she asked, "Is there going to be any non-pudding food?"

"Yes," he said almost defensively. "We're having chocolate-covered….."

Lily cut him off. "Okay, is there going to be any non-chocolate food at the party?"

Sirius sat and thought. And thought. And thought. And thought. And thought. "Steak," he said finally.

"Steak?"

"Steak."

"That's it?"

He thought for a little more. "Um, we're having, no, that's going to be dipped in chocolate. Never mind," he shook his head. "I guess not."

"What are you dipping in chocolate?"

"Shrimp."

"You're dipping shrimp in chocolate?" she asked disgusted.

"It _is _Remus' birthday," he pointed out. "His birthday. His obsession over a certain food."

"Are you sure that he wants this much chocolate and that it's not just you?" she asked.

"Nope. Mooney told me that if he were stranded on a deserted island and could only bring one thing with him, he said he'd want an unlimited amount of chocolate."

"He just told you this out of nowhere?" Lily wouldn't have been surprised either way. Knowing the Marauders, anything was possible.

"Nope, I asked him. It was a good conversation starter. Pete said he would bring sausages."

Lily grinned. "What did you say you'd bring?"

"A flying motorcycle to get off the island!" Sirius said as though it were obvious.

"Isn't that cheating?" Lily pointed out.

"That's what James said. So then I challenged him asking him what he'd bring and he said you without a second thought," Sirius shrugged and Lily's cheeks turned a tad bit pinker.

"Funny," Lily said quietly. "I would've picked him too."

"Yeah, well I finally said Dumbledore," Sirius said not noticing the smile on Lily's face."

"Why Dumbledore?"

"Because he's famous so a lot of people will be looking for him and we'll get rescued sooner. I would have said the Minister of Magic, but Dumbledore's actually fun to talk to."

XXX

"No, Pete," Remus said. "I just want to go home!" This had possibly been the _worst _birthday of his entire life. No, that would have been the first one after he'd been bitten, but still. James, Sirius, and Lily had all forgotten about his birthday (not even a card!) and Peter simply would not leave him alone! They'd been out all day and Peter just wouldn't let him go home. "Where's that key!" he hissed. About halfway through the evening, he realized that he'd left his key in his apartment, but he wasn't bothered too much; he had a spare key hidden under the potted plant by his door, but now he couldn't find it. Finally remembering that he was a wizard, he muttered, "Alohomora," and the door swung open.

"**SURPRISE!**" James, Lily, and Sirius shouted. There was a huge banner that hung from the ceiling that read, "Happy Birthday Mooney!" It had been charmed (probably by Lily) so that the letters faded into every color on a color wheel.

Remus stood there gaping. "You…." He couldn't even complete the thought.

"Awww! You didn't think that we'd forgotten did you?" James asked, grinning. "Good, cause that's what you were supposed to think.

Remus looked around the room. Besides the banner, it appeared that Sirius had almost had full-reign on the decorations. Balloons had been tied to the ceiling to look like a chandelier and the ceiling would most likely cave in soon from the weight of all the streamers. However, as the walls had not _completely _been wallpapered with crepe paper, clearly Prongs and Mrs. Prongs-to-be had put their feet down at some point. Remus's stomach growled. Peter had made sure that he didn't eat and now he knew why. "What are we eating?" he asked.

"Chocolate."


End file.
